The prevailing sentiment from the hard-working fellows out there on the road with the team seems to be that resting Johnny Damon last night was a mistake. And when it's your job to watch the games and present to your readers the reasons for their outcomes, you've got to find something. Damon's absence is as legit an explanation for a 4-0 loss in Minnesota as any, assuming one is required.

Me, I'm finding it hard to get worked up about. It would seem Joe Girardi's perfect right to rest the brittle, sore-shouldered Damon against a left-handed pitcher the rest of the team has hit hard in the recent past. Girardi's not going to play everybody every day for the rest of the year -- it's his job to find the right spots to rest his stars, and last night made sense for Damon and for Giambi.

The idea that the move could be controversial says something about Girardi and the way his first season as Yankees manager is going.

One of Girardi's biggest problems seems to be the way he presents himself to the media covering the team, particularly after tough losses. Where Joe Torre was nearly always charming and outwardly patient with questions -- even those he deemed silly or repetitive -- Girardi is often curt and testy. There's nothing actually unusual about this. It's the way most managers (and probably most people, period) handle such situations. Torre, not Girardi, was the exception, and those of us who covered Torre for years and years probably got spoiled.

That doesn't excuse Girardi's persistent, maddening secrecy regarding the most harmless of his managerial thought processes. And it doesn't excuse his snapping at reporters whose questions he doesn't like. All it really does is reveal the differences between a guy who's in his second year as a manager and a guy who's in his 27th. For all the talk about his talent, his promise and his intellect, Girardi remains an inexperienced manager. Given his position, it can be easy to forget that.

Excuses? There are plenty. But all they do is serve to underline that old saying about the similar ubiquity of excuses and a certain part of the human anatomy. Boston and Tampa Bay went with young pitching too, and the Yankees are losing sight of them in the standings. Minnesota traded the best pitcher in baseball and leads its division (not to mention the Yankees in the wild-card race).

And injuries? Ha. David Ortiz, Scott Kazmir, Mike Lowell, Carl Crawford, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Evan Longoria are just a handful of the significant AL East names who have missed time this year with injuries and are not Yankees. Somehow, the Rays and Sox have managed to overcome their injuries and occupy playoff position with 44 games left in the season. The Yankees have not.

Do we lay this at Girardi's feet? Not entirely, but we can't absolve him. It's a manager's job to make the best of bad situations -- to guide the team through difficult times. And (yes, we're going to make this comparison one more time) this is where Girardi's predecessor excelled. When injuries mounted and the standings got scary, Joe Torre had the ability to stand in the middle of the clubhouse and calmly, coolly tell the players in the room that he believed in their ability to turn it around. They bought it. And you know what else? They always did turn it around.

Joe Torre's Yankees made the playoffs every single year he was here. That wasn't good enough for his bosses, and so he's gone -- replaced by a guy who's in danger of starting 0-for-1 in that very crucial category. When they let Torre go, the bosses said the goal of the organization was to win the World Series -- conveniently glossing over the fact that you can't do that if you don't get into the postseason to begin with.

Joe Girardi's style is different -- just as positive, but much more intense, lacking the cool comfort brought on by decades of experiences and success.

Girardi's Yankees still could get into the playoffs. Yes, really. The Crawford and Longoria injuries will hurt the Rays, as will their brutal September schedule. The Red Sox made their 2008 team worse by trading Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers. The opportunity likely will be there for the Yankees to make up ground if they get hot.

But they will have to get hot. They will need to start winning games. And it's Joe Girardi's job to put them in position to do that.

If, in the end, it turns out that Girardi's hot-tempered intensity doesn't succeed in helping his team through the tough times and into October, he will have to be held accountable for that. When you take over a team that hasn't missed the playoffs in 15 years and you miss the playoffs, it's important that you assess your own role in that failure.

It may not be Girardi's fault that the Yankees find themselves in the position they're in right now. But he's not completely innocent either. The manager never is. And if we make excuses for him and absolve him of responsibility for it, then he's just going to think he did everything right and it's somebody else's fault it didn't work out.